Ask Me Why the Sun Shines
by Jaded
Summary: Branson returns to the house after he's done stewing in his cottage and has a conversation with Anna, who is passing through. Post episode 2x03. Some Sybil/Branson and Anna/Bates.


**Ask Me Why the Sun Shines**

"I don't know what you think you're doing Mr. Branson, but I think it would be wise of you to stop."

Branson folds his newspaper downward and eyes Anna wearily. The kitchens are quiet. The family is asleep. It's just the two of them in the servant's quarters. There's a soft buzz from the electric lights, and that's enough to ward off the silence. But to be sure, as much as he is for progress, he does sometimes miss the serenity of candlelight.

"I've already had this lecture from Mrs. Hughes, thank you, Anna. I needn't another one." He is sharp with her though he doesn't wish to be, but the weight of disappointment sits on his chest and squeezes out all the frustration and shame he's felt for the past year. I thought you were a good man, Mr. Branson, Mrs. Hughes had chided, and he felt again as though he were pressed over his mother's knee again, but it appears my judgment of character is not always correct.

"I don't think you quite understand me," Anna says, undoing her apron and sits down across from him at the table. "I'm not talking about your 'special soup' for the general." She gives him a meaningful look that he purposefully, mulishly refuse to understand.

Branson has always liked Anna, respects her though even, though they have few interests in common. She has always been kind and intelligent. And shrewd. He reminds himself to add that to the list of her attributes when she says what she does next.

"I found your letter in Lady Sybil's room." Her words are plain and pointed, and he feels himself flush to know that so many people saw his confession. The worry strikes him next, that through this he has implicated Sybil.

"What business did you have reading it?" he asks evenly, keeping his temper in check, also holding back the relief that he wrote very little in that letter, that the only sign of his feelings for her the carefully rendered, "Forgive me," the was meant to say so many things.

He's been more hot-headed than usual as of late, ever since he dropped off Lady Sybil in York at the teaching hospital ever since the day he laid everything bare and was met with rejection, and he knows it's a foolish way to act but it's how he feels, and he doesn't want to quash it up and bury his passion inside of himself where he knows it will go to die. He sees how it is with these grand lords and ladies, and he's seen the passion buried inside like with his Pa, and he refused to let that be his fate.

"I'd ask you the same," Anna says pointedly. "What business did you have writing it? And may I ask, what is the chauffeur doing in a lady's room in the first place? I'm surprised you were not caught by one of the maids, or to be sure, by one of the family!" There's a bit of spirit to her voice again, the confidence that all but disappeared after Mr. Bates's hasty departure.

"That's my business, isn't it?" he says. "I would not presume to ask you your business, especially as it regards Mr. Bates. I'll say goodnight now, Anna, if you don't mind. "

Branson gets up from the table, rolls up the newspaper in his hand to take back to his cottage. Much to his disappointment no one else downstairs ever bothers to read the papers after they've been discarded by the family; not unless there is a scandal or photographs of some grand thing. The only person he can have a proper conversation with is Sybil, but that is such a tenuous thing, the way they've been tripping around one another as of late.

Anna stands up as if to follow him, but she stays rooted by her chair. "What you're saying then is that you and Lady Sybil are like me and Mr. Bates?"

"I…" he's been caught, but he's been caught before by Mrs. Hughes, and he paid her no mind either. The heart wants what the heart wants, he thinks. And there are so many things in this life that he desires, that he hopes for, that he dreams of at night when he is alone in the chauffeur's cottage. He gets ready to say, "It's not like that," or "it's not what you think," but instead lets his shoulders drop and says, "It's hopeless, isn't it?"

"Mr. Branson, you're such a fine young man with a good head on your shoulders." Anna pauses and bites her laugh, and Branson almost joins her when he says,

"Save for tonight?"

Anna smiles, and her face reminds him of his favorite sister, Nan, who was always patient with him when he lost his temper or got himself into a spot of trouble. "Yes, perhaps not your finest hour. What I'm trying to say is, why this?"

"The soup or Lady Sybil?"

Her face opens up as if to say, ahh, when he confirms her suspicion. She takes a moment, then says gently, "I'd say both."

Branson slumps against the wall and looks up, through the ceiling to the stars, to where Sybil lies sleeping. He thinks he might as well aim for the moon, and that's when his frustration bubbles over.

"Do you ever feel as though something is just within your reach? That you have done everything possible to make it happen, only to have it snatched away?"

Anna shifts as though the floor is giving away, and she's quickly blinking her eyes as though banishing tears. She nods without a word and he thinks he must be breaking a record for foolishness tonight. "Yes," she says at last, her voice breathy. "I know it. I know the feeling well."

"Why is it the way it is?" he asks, and he thinks he might as well be asking the sun why it shines. "I feel as though there's nothing holding me back except for odd, outside circumstance. I would do . . . I would do anything to be with her, and sometimes I think she would do the same for me, but there is convention holding everything back. Her family. Class. Money. But it's nothing but manners and expectations. There is no mountain between us, no ties that cannot be mended or reputation recovered."

"Is that what you really think, Mr. Branson?"

"It's what I know to be true," and when he says it it's the first time he truly believes it.

For weeks now she has been seeking him out, stopping by the garage, wandering into the kitchens long after she'd completed the cookery lessons with Mrs. Patmore.

"I'll bake you a cake," she had said in her husky voice a week before when he was in one of his better moods. "For your birthday." She'd leaned against the pantry, smiling as the other scullery maids scampered around trying to avoid spilling even a drop of water on her ladyship's purple dress.

"When's that, Mr. Branson?" Daisy had asked, peeking her little mouse head up from beneath the sink, pushing a stray hair out of her eyes.

"Why that would be the 26th of October, Daisy," he had said kindly, looking at Sybil, who already knew this, who had the year past given him a book on a ride into Ripon. It's not about politics. It's a novel. I think you should have fun when you read, too, Branson. Try it. For me.

"I will have to write that down so I remember," Sybil had winked, her face luminous. "Though unfortunately, strawberries won't be in season, though I know they are your favorite." She'd swept away, unaware she'd slipped up that she'd know such a fact about a servant, and Daisy hadn't been the wiser.

And here he had been a bear toward her at every waking moment, glowering and biting.

"I'm afraid I might have mucked everything up, though, Anna."

"Did you two argue today? When I was dressing Lady Sybil, she seemed . . . preoccupied. Sad even."

"Aye. I have made a mess of things, haven't I?"

"Does she care for you, Mr. Branson? In the way you wish her to?"

He looks up, trying to read her face. Their conversation had started with a warning, but Anna seems far away from that piece of advice now that he feels disoriented. She's asking him questions, but seeking answers from another who is not there to respond.

"I believe she does, yes. But while she comes to speak to me all the time as friends, perhaps as more, the next moment she is Lady Sybil again, shuttered and polite, and," he shakes his head, "I don't know." He wonders why he couldn't have found himself a girl more like Anna, but then as much as he likes the head housemaid, her fire is different. It's a slow burn, and he needs combustion. "The Crawleys are very good at keeping their feelings to themselves, aren't they? They shutter their feelings. It's all very proper and English of them."

"Save for Lady Grantham," Anna says with a small smile. "But she is an American."

"Perhaps the Crawley daughters should be more like their American mother," Branson says thoughtfully. "Americans are not afraid of showing their passion."

"Perhaps Lady Sybil does take up after her mother after all," Anna says. "If you like her so very much, Mr. Branson. You must have seen that."

He flushes and hope she cannot see, but even if she does, Anna is the soul of discretion.

"But I would watch yourself, Mr. Branson. I know how difficult it is to fight one's feelings, but you must be careful, you must think this over. The fact that she is a lady and you are a chauffeur—this hasn't changed."

"I've thought about this four three years already, Anna." Anna is silent, absorbing this. "You must understand what it is to feel caught in what feels like an impossible circumstance, but to still have hope."

Her face opens into the saddest of smiles and she simply nods. "I'll say goodnight now, Mr. Branson."

He nods and watch her head up to her rooms. As for himself, he folds up the paper and locks up after he shuts the door.

And in the morning when the sun wakes him, he doesn't ask why it shines. And he doesn't ask why when Sybil stops by after breakfast, nor does he when she asks him to know more about his cousin whom he lost in the Easter Sunday uprising. He just continues his work as he talks; as she listens.

[the end]


End file.
